Abbott launches AMEC with bingo bonanza
Leader of the Federal opposition Tony Abbott opened the AMEC conference in Perth with a speech primed for word bingo players.
Abbott was called to the lectern with the news that he had just hit the front as preferred Prime Minister over Julia Gillard in a recent poll.
He opened his address to the representatives of Western Australia’s mining industry telling them that he saw them not as exploiters or polluters but as “people who are vital for the economic future of all of us”.
“Mining is our economic life blood. Mining is essential to what Australia is. Mining is essential to what Australia will and should be,” he said
Abbott went on to tell the miners in attendance pretty much what they already know about what they do and consider themselves to be.
He told them the industry is a world leader setting the standard in innovation, environmental care and respect of indigenous culture.
“The mining industry represents Australia at its best,” Abbott said.
“The industry is about innovation and creativity. It’s about going out there, taking on the world and succeeding.”
All this may be so but the Liberal Party leader said the current outlook for the mining industry isn’t as bright as everybody would like it to be.
“It is not that the miners of Australia have suddenly lost their drive,” he said.
“No. The mining industry is under pressure; under pressure which has been entirely generated by the Australian government.”
Those playing Tony Abbott bingo had their cards ready for some furious marking as they knew what was coming next.
The audience had come for some reaffirmation about how bad the Federal Labor Government’s mining tax is and their man wasn’t about to let them down.
“The mining tax is a bad tax,” Abbott intoned to the silent cheering of the bingo battlers. “Let’s not make any bones about it.”
Being in Western Australia Abbott knew exactly where to pitch his homily.
He even managed to recruit, perhaps hypothetically, Western Australian Labor leader Eric Ripper to his team labelling him as a, “decent Labor person”’ as he realised that taxing miners is probably not a good idea.
“State royalties are, quite rightly, a revenue source for our states and if it is thought by our people, in their wisdom, that the mining industry should pay more for the limited resources that it uses then the right way to deal with that is to have the State Governments appropriately increase royalties,” Abbott said.
“But that is not how the Federal Government has treated the industry. First of all we have seen the first version of a mining tax that if implemented it would have made Australian mining the most heavily taxed mining in the world.
“Now we have a new version of the tax that is currently limited to iron ore and coal, which could easily be extended more widely, and which I regret to say was negotiated with just three big companies.”
Abbott made sure he kept the big three of BHP billiton, Rio Tinto and Xstrata on side mentioning he held nothing against them personally for the fact they chose to negotiate with the government separately from the rest of the mining community.
Unsurprisingly he held his venom for the current government.
“Serious governments take everyone who will be impacted by a change into their confidence before they make decisions,” he said.
“Serious governments don’t divide our society into insiders and outsiders.
“Serious governments treat all relevant and affected Australians as valuable citizens for the purpose of consultation.
“I want to tell you, on behalf of the opposition, that we are opposed to the mining tax, we will oppose it in opposition and we will rescind it in government.
“That’s what I have said ever since the mining tax was announced. That’s what I say today and that is what I will keep saying as long as the mining tax is a threat to this industry.”